Darker Than Any Shadow

Chapter Seven

I tried to find Rico, but he’d vanished, so I found Trey instead. He hadn’t moved two feet from his post beside the back door, only now an Atlanta PD officer guarded the entrance instead of him. He told me about his interview, which had gone very much like my interview.

Yes, Cummings was working without a partner. No, he didn’t know why, sometimes detectives just did. Yes, he remembered Cummings from his time at the APD. No, he hadn’t any idea if he was a good cop or a bad cop.

He took off his jacket and draped it over my bare shoulders. I hadn’t realized I was shivering until it settled around me, warm and smelling of him, welcome even in its dampness.

I pulled it tighter. “I can’t believe I’m cold.”

“It’s shock. You’ll feel better when you can get dry.”

I moved closer to him and dropped my voice. “Have you been able to read anyone?”

“No, not clearly anyway.”

“Damn. I was hoping your secret weapon would help me sort this out.”

It was an ability both simple and astonishing—ever since The Accident, Trey could spot a lie with uncanny accuracy. The damage to his right frontal lobe had left him with an enhanced sensitivity to micro-emotive expressions, which meant that deliberate untruths lit up people’s faces like Christmas trees.

I knew for myself how good he was—I was the uncrowned queen of the necessary fib, the not-quite-on-the-money explanation, the straight-faced whopper. Dating a man with such an ability was a precarious endeavor for someone like me, someone used to a little creative editing, but it proved useful at times.

Like when I found dead bodies.

Unfortunately, when people are confronted with a violent crime, especially murder, they immediately start lying, even the innocent ones. They blank out parts of the story and twist their involvement, aggrandizing heroic moments and minimizing problematic ones. Human are lying animals, after all. It’s our birthright, along with opposable thumbs and a taste for simple sugars.

“So what about Lex? When you found him in the parking lot?”

“Hard to determine. When I asked about Jackson, his hands were shaking, and he kept his eyes averted. That could have been nervousness, however.”

“He didn’t seem nervous when I talked to him. He was downright smug, despite the fact that Jackson had just tossed his ass into a wall.”

Rico appeared from a knot of uniformed officers, looking tired and frustrated and utterly beaten up. I reached out to him, but he shook his head. That was when I noticed the second cop right behind him.

“Rico?”

“I gotta go give a statement.”

“Why?” I pushed my way over, but the cops kept moving him on.

“It’s the machine, baby girl, and I’m stuck in it for a while. I’ll call you when I get out, all right?”

He was almost out of the parking lot when Frankie bustled right up in his face. The cops pulled up tight, like their reins had gotten a yank. She was an imposing barrier, one hand on her hip, the other pointed at Rico.

“I have to talk to him.”

The cop shook his head. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but—”

She ignored him and turned to Rico. “What happened? Why are they taking you in?”

He shook his head. “Get Tai to fill you in on the details.”

“Who?”

He pointed, and she turned my way. Sudden recognition flared in her face, then a brusque appraisal as she sized me up.

She turned back to Rico. “Call me when you get finished. We need to decide how the team is going to deal with this.”

This, she said. As if a murder were some annoying complication.

As they led Rico away, I spotted a familiar figure—short, olive-skinned, his salt-and-pepper hair pulled into a ponytail, his ever-present camera around his neck. Padre, the former team leader, Rico’s role model and poet hero. We’d met several times after Rico’s performances for drinks and general adoration. I remembered him as laughing, effusive, good-natured and jovial. Tonight his expression was pinched, his eyes dark.

Frankie skewered him with a look. “You were supposed to be here hours ago.”

“I got hung up.”

“How?”

“In an interview with the paper, what does it matter?”

“It matters a lot.”

He ignored her and looked at me. “What happened?”

I explained. His face crumpled as I told the story, his features twisting first with shock, then sadness, then sympathy. He abruptly lunged at me and engulfed me in a hug.

“Hang in there, babe. It’ll be all right.”

I let him squeeze me for a while; he smelled like cigarettes and patchouli, an oddly comforting combination. When he finally released me, he took a step toward Trey like he was gonna hug him too. But then he bounced off the invisible force field that Trey kept up and settled for standing there, hands on hips.

He shook his head. “Tough night, man.”

Trey nodded. “Indeed.”

Frankie still had a bone to pick with Padre, however. “This is all your fault.”

“Me? Why?”

“You were supposed to be emceeing! If you’d been here, I could have kept Lex in line instead of having to stop and run the show.” She turned her attention to me. “They say you found him?”

“Jackson and I both did.”

She made a noise of exasperation. “Team finals start on Friday. That’s one week. How am I supposed to get us back on track by then, much less prepare for the individual rounds?” She started ticking off on her fingers. “I have to fill out an exigency request, reschedule the practices, start thinking about who to substitute—”

“What about Vigil?”

“That’s trading one problem for another. But I may have to use him. I didn’t work this hard to see our team pulled at the last minute.”

Padre stepped forward. “Take your fingers off the wheel, Frankie, at least for a little while.”

She glared at him. And then she stalked off, no doubt to drag some important Performance Poetry International officials from their beds and harangue them.

Padre watched her go, hands in pockets. “That woman will never learn. She’s all stick and no carrot.”

I had to agree. As we watched, she intruded on Jackson’s interview, then made a direct heading toward Cricket, who was trembling in a folding chair, a glass of water in hand. I felt an immediate surge of sympathy for Cricket, a small island with a big hurricane headed its way.

Padre shook his head in that direction. “I knew it was a bad idea letting him stay at their place.”

“Him who?”

“Lex.”

It took me a second to catch up. “Lex stayed with Cricket and Jackson?”

“It’s the hospitality rule of poets everywhere. If you don’t have a bed, somebody will find you a sofa. And you’ve got a sofa, you make it available to whoever needs it.”

“He didn’t live here?”

“No, he lived down the coast, near Brunswick. He only came up here for practice and slams. Jackson kicked him out yesterday, though.” He shrugged philosophically. “The boy had a way of stirring things up, for good or ill.”

This mess was getting more and more complicated. I could barely keep track of who was who and where they were sleeping. But I remembered Jackson’s anger.

“Was this about the missing money?”

Padre eyed me sharply. “How’d you hear about that?”

“I heard Lex and Jackson arguing. Violently.”

He shook his head. “I told Jackson it wasn’t Lex. I watched Lex put that money in the safe and close the door, then leave empty-handed and innocent. Of that particular crime anyway.”

He looked over my shoulder, and I turned to see the body being wheeled out into a waiting fire and rescue vehicle. Photographic flashes flared in the night, looking like some strange aurora borealis in the halogen street lights. Padre followed my eyes as I watched the car containing Rico pull away.

He patted my back. “One thing at a time, babe. I’ll talk to Cricket and Jackson. You make sure Rico’s okay. Okay?” He frowned. “Why are they taking him in anyway?”

“I don’t know. But it can’t be good.”

“Maybe they have a line-up. Or maybe they wanna do a police sketch.”

I shook my head. “No, something’s up. Rico never goes quietly. I don’t like it.”

“It’ll be okay, I’m sure. Tell him I’ll see him Sunday morning, okay?”

“For what?”

“Photo shoot. The team’s getting new head shots. You can come, if you like. I’ll snap one of you too.”

“Sure. If Rico’s up to it after all this.”

He patted my shoulder. “He will be. He’s a pro. And Frankie’s got one thing right—the show must go on.”

He ambled off Cricket and Jackson’s way, hands tucked in the pockets of his photographer’s vest. Trey watched him go. Now that the actual cops were on scene, he’d lost an active role in keeping things straight. Stuck with nothing to do, he’d retreated into stoic passivity.

His eyes narrowed. “Who was that?”

“I don’t remember his real name. Everybody calls him Padre,” I explained. “He got his start back in the seventies at the Nuyorican when it was only a bunch of poets in somebody’s East Village living room. Rico idolizes him.”

“What does he do now?”

“A little of everything—writing, teaching, photography. Rico says he’s the reason the documentary got greenlit so fast. Rumor has it he’s fetching a pretty penny for his part in it. A piece of spoken word history, that man.” I looked at Trey. “Why the curiosity, Mr. Seaver?”

Trey was still watching Padre, who by now had reached Cummings and was introducing himself. He looked like an anachronism, a photo from the sixties come to life next to the clean-cut APD cops in black serge.

“He was lying,” Trey said.

“About what?”

“About why he was late.”

“What about the money story, about Lex not taking it? Was that the truth?”

Trey nodded. “Everything else was true, as far as I could tell anyway.”

I leaned against the wall and shoved my hair out of my face. Jeez, was everybody here a suspect? Rico and Adam? Cricket and Jackson? Frankie? Padre? Me? Trey? And as the cop car pulled away with Rico inside—no lights, no sirens, only purpose—I knew the answer was yes.

Suspects all.